


Hunger

by MissBrainProblems



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-29
Updated: 2019-11-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 02:14:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21609850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissBrainProblems/pseuds/MissBrainProblems
Summary: A young Ward in San Antonio takes some stress out.Prototype story featuring one of my OCs, Daniella Cortez.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 6





	Hunger

Fuck them. Fuck all of them. Fuck the Wards, fuck the Protectorate, fuck the rest of the PRT, and fuck every single last one of the criminals in San Antonio that had forced Daniella Cortez into the position that she was in. They told her that she was out of control, had unironically called her a "loose cannon", like she was some shitty character from some shitty seventies' cop flick; they had told her that she was on the last straw, that if she violated PRT regulations again, that disciplinary action would have to be taken against her, up to and including expulsion from the Wards. Wildchild, they had said, was just turning out to be too much of a liability.

Fuck that. Fuck all of that. Daniella was doing good work, and she _knew_ that she was doing good work; she was beating up gangbangers and drug dealers and all other sorts of scum who victimized the most vulnerable citizens of San Antonio. More importantly than that, though, Wildchild was making sure that those criminals wouldn't ever be able to harm anybody like that ever again, that their careers of exploiting the people of her city would be at an end; she had no idea how the PRT felt that breaking the spines of a few psychopathic thugs constituted being a "loose cannon", but there Daniella was regardless, having to deal with that sort of ruling handed down to her from on high. With a scoff, she wondered if the Director _wanted_ San Antonio to become a gang-ruled shithole like the one that her parents had escaped eighteen years ago.

Her parents... Mama and Papa were the only two things in the world that gave her pause when considering her chosen courses of action; they had done so much for her over the course of her life, and Daniella, in turn, was doing everything she did as a hero for her parents, in one way or another. The PRT having agreed to grant her parents amnesty and citizenship was one thing, and Daniella earning enough from her service with the Wards to move the Cortez family into a better neighborhood was another thing, but there was far more to it than just that; Daniella wanted to make sure that she, in the guise of Wildchild, could keep the parent her cities had escaped to from becoming another San Salvador, a city with tar and crystal being pushed on every street corner, a city with murders in the streets on a daily basis, a city where parahuman-led gangs ruled with an iron fist and brutally disposed of anyone that dared to stand against them.

Maybe her Mama and her Papa would have disapproved of her methods, but Daniella didn't expect them to understand, not when they weren't out on the streets of San Antonio every night and seeing just how much the supervillain cartels from down south were encroaching on Wildchild's turf; maybe her parents would disapprove of her methods, but Daniella _knew_ that she had to do what she did if she wanted to keep them safe, and thus she could tolerate some disappointment if it meant that she could do what needed to be done. It was with that mentality in hand, then, that Daniella had ditched Carolynn only half an hour into what was supposed to be their joint patrol; her fellow Ward was far too stuffy and prudish to allow Wildchild to do what she wanted to do, but she didn't possess the necessary mobility to keep up with Daniella once the girl in question started dashing off. Even with her communicator turned off, Daniella was all too aware that Carolynn had likely reported her to the Director, and that Wildchild would have hell to pay once she returned from patrol; fuck them, though, and fuck all of the PRT that didn't have the _cojones_ required to _really_ get shit done on the streets.

Daniella had long discovered the way that manipulating the mass in her legs and feet on the fly gave her significant dashing, jumping, and leaping ability; it was, in some ways, an absolutely liberating feeling for the girl to run at high speeds across the city in the middle of the night, the only trace of her coming and going being the cracks left behind on asphalt and concrete by her parahumanly heavy footsteps as she launched herself around with sheer tons of force and pressure. As much as she delighted in the feeling of the wind rushing past her supernaturally light body as she flew through the air with every leap, though, Daniella maintained the presence of mind necessary to keep an eye out for any potential targets on the streets below; parahuman joyrides were fun enough, but Daniella was out there with a _purpose_ , and it was one that she wouldn't let herself forget in moments of temporary exhilaration.

And then, she spotted them; a group of young men, walking along the sidewalk, letting out obnoxious laughs and snorts while drinking from open, unconcealed containers of liquor. Members of the Los Diablos gang, judging by the red colors they were; stupid, Daniella thought, a stupid name for a stupid collection of thugs who stupidly wore easily identifiable colors out of some sense of "pride" for the horrific organization that they were apart of. As stupid as it was, though, Daniella didn't mind their outfit too much, not when it let her spot them from a mile away; with one more carefully maneuvered leap, Wildchild landed several feet in front of the gangbangers with a loud crash, sending a small cloud of concrete dust up as she shattered the sidewalk she slammed down onto. Speaking in the type of Spanish that a child of immigrants would speak, Daniella smirked at the Diablos members, hands on her hips. " _Pretty late for a stroll, isn't it, bros_?"

The gangbangers stood there for several silent, tense seconds, as they waited for the dust to dissipate from around the new arrival; once they saw who it was, though, their faces went pale, and shouts of alarm went up in the same language that Daniella had addressed them in. " _Fuck! It's Wildchild! Run!_ " Daniella practically _growled_ at the praise those words offered her. As much as the grouches at the PRT wanted to complain about her methods, Wildchild had made the criminals in San Antonio _afraid_ of her, afraid enough of her that they _ran_ just at the _sight_ of her; how was Daniella _not_ a hero when she struck fear into the hearts of thugs and criminals like that? " _Someone get Malverde on the phone and let him know this bitch is over_ _here!_ " Malverde, one of Los Diablos' capes; all of that gang's villains named themselves after a Latin American folk saint, and Jesus Malverde was one that drug traffickers in particular liked to worship, claiming that their business "stole from the rich and gave to the poor", like some kind of fucked up Robin Hood. Regardless of how ridiculous Malverde's alias was, though, it didn't change the fact that Daniella didn't need a confrontation with him, not when her primary objective was to work on the actual street-level thugs that were under his employ.

" _Nuh uh. None of that._ " As the Los Diablos goons turned tail and began to ran, Wildchild set up her attack; she increased the mass in her legs, decreased the mass in the rest of her body, primed a leap, threw herself toward the group of criminals, and then increased the mass of her entire form once she was mid-air. By the time that she reached the gangbangers, she was like a bowling ball slamming into a group of pins, her outstretched arms - increased to several times their normal weight - clotheslining most of the criminals onto the ground; as the smell of alcohol filled her nose from bottles having broken apart on the sidewalk, Daniella began grabbing every cellphone in sight that she could, crushing them in her artificially dense hands even as the Diablos members struggled to stand up. " _Ah, you up, bros? And here I thought it was past your bedtime._ "

The gangsters grit their teeth and looked at each other, one taking a cautionary, testing step toward Wildchild, but backing off when the Ward didn't seem to react in the slightest toward their movement; one looked like he was ready to keep running, but the two closest of his "friends" stopped him, turning him back toward the superhero that a bunch of unpowered morons were trying to size up against. Eventually, though, the tension seemed to break one of them, causing the young man to growl, before he threw the still intact bottle he had in his hand at Daniella. " _Fuck you, you stupid bitch!_ " As the beer impotently smashed itself against Daniella's head - doing nothing much but wetting her hair and the dark green domino mask she wore - the gangbanger pulled out his pistol, pointed it at her, and began firing wildly, breaking the silence of the night with the loud cracks of gunshots.

" _Really?_ " Wildchild, for her part, just stood there as the bullets blunted themselves against her parahumanly dense body; the costume that she wore - its color matching the girl's domino mask - didn't come out unscathed, but the flesh underneath it looked like it might only end up bruising from the bullet impacts, with no other clear injury present. " _Seriously? You guys should KNOW that shooting me doesn't do shit._ " As the Los Diablos member's pistol clicked weakly to signify an empty magazine, the metal that had been shot at Wildchild dropped to the concrete, giving off quiet clinks as they hit the ground; with a crazed grin, Daniella dramatically cracked her knuckles as she took one, loud, sidewalk cracking step toward the gangbangers. " _My_ _turn, shitheads._ "

Wildchild instilled _fear_ and _dread_ into villains and gang members; how was she _not_ a hero when she made grown ass men scream and cry in terror and run away from her when she forced them to face up to their misdeeds? " _Fuck this, dudes, I'm fucking out!_ " As the cowardly one from before made to escape once more, Daniella did another quick shift of her mass to launch herself at him; right before she collided with him, she increased the density of her outstretched hand, so that when she slammed his head into the concrete, every bone in his face would shatter from the impact. Not taking any longer than necessary to delight in the justice she had doled out to the thug, though, she turned on the rest of his friends in quick succession. The one who had shot at Daniella wound up with his hands broken and mangled, ensuring that he'd never be able to hold a gun or pull a trigger ever again. Another of the criminals wound up thrown into the brick wall of a nearby building, the dent he left suggesting that his body had suffered as much damage as the construction itself had. Yet one more had his leg bones each snapped in half by Wildchild's supernaturally heavy feet stamping onto his thighs and his calves; to say that he would never have been able to run from justice again would have been a fair bit of an understatement.

The last one had a bit more fight in him than the others had, and scowled down at Daniella as the girl had him held up in the air by his shirt; spitting into the face of the young Ward, the gangbanger growled out in a low voice: " _Fuck you, bitch. Santa Muerte's going to find you, and she's going to_ _KILL you, gonna make it slow and painful, teach you stupid fucking heroes to mess with Los_ _Diablos!_ " Santa Muerte, Holy Death; the name of Los Diablos' leader in San Antonio, and a woman that could scare the shit out of even Daniella whenever the two of them got caught up in a fight against each other. The goon must have seen the temporary flash of fear in Wildchild's face, as he continued his mockery with renewed vigor. " _Yeah, you heard me, you stupid brat! Santa Muerte! She's gonna kill you, kill all the heroes, and then she's gonna make this city ours, bitch! She's gonna make San Antonio belong to Los Diablos, she's gonna-_ "

Daniella slammed the gangster down into the asphalt of the street, and the look on his face accompanied by a snapping sound suggested that something important had probably broken; the Ward was far too furious to worry about any of that, though, shaking the man as she screamed into his face. " _Fuck you! Fuck all of you! Los Diablos is NEVER taking over this city! You, your drugs, your violence, your crime, your gangs? NONE of that is EVER going to be welcome in San Antonio, is NEVER going to be welcome in MY CITY._ " Wildchild pulled the Los Diablos member up, before smashing him down into the asphalt again, prompting a weak groan of agony from his lips. " _You might have taken over everything south of the border, you fucking monsters, but so long as Wildchild is here, your fucking cartels will never, NEVER take over San Antonio. Do you understand me, shithead?!_ " Daniella grabbed onto the gangbanger's face, squeezing down, feeling his skull begin to strain as she did so. " _I said, do you understand me, shithead?!_ " It would be so simple. It would be so easy. She could just kill him, right then and there. Rid the streets of one piece of trash, one piece of filth and scum that had doubtlessly taken lives, doubtlessly would take lives, innocent lives, lives like those of her parents, and would ruin lives by pushing drugs and prostitution and everything else. It would be so, so simple, to just...

Daniella let go, dropping him to the ground and allowing him to moan in pain; his spine was probably broken, given the way he was laying there, but she didn't need to kill him. As the faces of her Mama and her Papa flashed through her head, though, she shook her head, and corrected her thoughts: Daniella _shouldn't_ kill him, no matter how much of a piece of shit he was, because even if her parents wouldn't approve of the sort of stuff that she had just done to the gangbangers lying around her at that moment, Daniella knew that her parents would never _forgive_ her if she crossed the line and actively _killed_ a person, even if she really, genuinely felt like he might deserve it. Maybe a stronger person would have been able to accept being hated by her parents in order to _really_ rid her city of the gangs that threatened to infest it, but Daniella loved her Mama and her Papa too much to turn even them against her; with an artificially light kick to the paralyzed man's legs, Daniella began walking away from the injured goons and thugs, turning her communicator back on. "This is Wildchild. Sorry 'bout that. Signal went out for a bit. Anyone hear me?"

Everyone on the line knew that it was bullshit, but it was still some small sort of formality that they underwent just for propriety's sake; the Director, though, didn't seem very amused by the little act, his smoke-charred voice loud in Daniella's ears as he screamed at her over the radio. "Wildchild! What the _fuck_ is wrong with you?! You ditch your partner and then go radio silent for an hour?! You're off patrol, effective immediately. Get back to HQ. _Now_."

With a grin, Daniella turned back to where the Los Diablos members were straining to stand up and recover themselves, a few already beginning to limp off to whatever safety they could find. "Yeah, sure thing, boss. Be right there." As she launched herself into the air, taking flying leaps toward Wards HQ, Daniella barely registered the voice of her Director yelling at her about proper titles, and politeness, and all of the other bullshit that he tried to shove down her throat so much of the time. Fuck him; he didn't matter, and neither did any of the people that Daniella worked for. The only people that mattered to Daniella were her parents, and everything that she did, essentially, she did for them. If the PRT couldn't understand that Wildchild was simply doing what needed to be done to keep the gangs from taking over San Antonio? So be it, let them be the ones who decided to be _weak_ , to be _cowardly_. Daniella, though? No matter what trouble she got into for doing what she did, no matter how much punishment or disciplinary action she received from her bosses, Daniella _would_ keep fighting, _would_ make sure that the city that she and her parents lived in would _never_ live to be at the mercy of drug dealers, criminals, gangsters, and cartels; no matter what else happened, Daniella would, at the very least, keep fighting to make sure that her family could be safe.


End file.
